by James Hayman
‘So Sessions doesn’t blow the whistle …’
‘Because Kane can prove he was on the take.’
‘He leave a suicide note?’
‘Nope.’
‘Any sign of a choke hold or drugs in Stan’s blood?’
‘No.’
‘So you can’t prove a thing.’
‘Damn, you’re good, McCabe.’
46
Friday. 10:30 A.M.
McCabe half expected Sandy to turn up on his flight back to Portland. Thank God, she didn’t. Sitting next to Sandy, chatting about her coming weekend with Casey, would have been more than he could have handled. Anyway, it was early. Sandy was probably still in her West End Avenue apartment, picking out the perfect wardrobe for parental visitation. Something conservative and motherly. Sandy was good at playing roles, equally good at dressing for them.
The plane was one of those small commuter jobs with undersized seats. He looked around to see if he could snag an empty row before squeezing into his assigned aisle seat. No such luck. The flight was packed. Next to him a distracted businesswoman in full New York chic rummaged through her Ferragamo briefcase. He smiled at her. She smiled back as she extracted a Wall Street Journal and stowed the briefcase under the seat. Then she immersed herself in the paper, signaling a lack of interest in small talk. McCabe leaned back in agreement, closed his eyes, and thought about his conversation with Melody Bollinger. Was Lucas Kane dead and buried in Florida or alive and cutting out hearts in Maine? He was ready to bet on the latter.
His cell phone vibrated shortly after the plane bumped down at Portland International Jetport. Maggie’s name appeared in the window. ‘What’s up?’
‘Good news, bad news. The good news is I’m back on the case and on my way to search Spencer’s house. Thought you might want to join us. Unless you’re still in New York.’
‘No, I’m here. Just touched down. What’s the bad news?’
‘We don’t know where Spencer is.’
‘He’s gone?’ McCabe looked out the window. The plane seemed to be crawling to the gate. ‘Gone where?’
‘We don’t know. The cop watching his house doesn’t know. The hospital doesn’t know either. Woman at the Levenson Heart Center said he was supposed to be in surgery this morning. He never showed up.’
Spencer would never miss surgery, would he? The plane stopped about a hundred yards short of the terminal. ‘When was the last time anyone spoke to him?’
‘At 6:00 A.M.,’ said Maggie. ‘Hospital called him at home. He answered.’
Maggie was interrupted by the voice of the captain. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid there’ll be a short delay while we wait for a gate to open up. Shouldn’t be more than a minute or two.’
‘Shit,’ McCabe said. Too loudly. The woman next to him gave him a look. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. He looked out the window. Couldn’t see anything.
‘A teenage boy died early this morning,’ Maggie continued, ‘from injuries in a car crash. Spencer was supposed to be installing his heart in a thirty-two-year-old woman named –’ Maggie paused. Seemed like she was checking her notes. ‘– Lisa Lynch.’
‘He never showed up?’
‘You got it. They called Dr. Codman to cover. Almost lost the heart and the woman.’
Why would Spencer not show up? There were a lot of reasons, none of them good. ‘You tried the house yourself, and his cell?’
‘Yeah. Voice mail picks up on both. I think we were wrong about him not being involved. I think he flew the coop,’ said Maggie.
McCabe doubted it. Even if Maggie was right and Spencer was involved, taking off would practically be an admission of guilt. Okay. They had the earring, and the blood from the Lexus, but even taken together that wouldn’t be enough to convict. Not with a lawyer like Sheldon Thomas. Hell, they couldn’t even prove Spencer was driving the Lexus. The evidence they had was a lot less damning than OJ and his Bruno Magli shoes. Thomas would have told him that.
The plane inched forward again.
Maggie’s voice was in his ear. ‘I think maybe he’s guilty and Tasco rattled him more than you thought during that interview. He decides we’re getting close to nailing him and bango, he hits the road.’
‘Yeah. Maybe,’ McCabe said. Although he wasn’t buying it. The plane reached the gate. The pilot turned off the seat belt sign, and people all around him started getting up. ‘What about Hattie?’ he asked.
‘We don’t know where she is either. I think they took off together.’
The woman next to McCabe was looking at him again. He was still in his seat, and she wanted out. He stood up and banged his head on the overhead. ‘Where are you now?’ he asked, pushing his way into the aisle and rubbing his head.
‘We’re just leaving 109.’
‘Have you put out an ATL yet?’ He didn’t want to use Spencer’s name.
‘Yeah. For both the BMW and the Porsche. Every department in Maine plus the New Hampshire staties.’
The flight attendant opened the door, and the line of people started inching out.
‘We’ve got public transport covered as well. Buses. Trains. The airport.’
‘Maybe I’ll run into them on the way out,’ said McCabe. The idea made him smile. Grimly.
The line stopped again. In front of McCabe, a girl around twenty, probably a college kid, was blocking the aisle, struggling to release a duffel bag way too big for the overhead space. He slipped the cell phone into his pocket and wrestled it down for her. They started moving again.
He could hear Maggie shouting from inside his pocket. ‘Hey, McCabe, you still there?’
He pulled the phone out. ‘Yeah. I’m trying to get off the plane. Call you right back.’ He flipped it off.
Up ahead, the flight attendant chirped her mandatory farewells. ‘Bye-bye.’ Smile. ‘Bye-bye.’ Smile. ‘Bye-bye.’ Smile. Finally he was free.
He called Maggie back. ‘Meet you at Trinity Street?’
‘I just sent a car to the airport to pick you up,’ she told him. ‘Should be there any minute.’
By the time McCabe reached the exit, the black-and-white Crown Vic was pulling into a no-parking zone right out front, lights flashing. He slipped into the front seat. ‘Alright, hit it,’ he told the officer driving. ‘Lights and siren, 24 Trinity Street.’
Dave Hennings called as they turned out of the airport and onto Congress Street. McCabe asked the driver to silence the siren.
‘Howdy, partner, how you doing?’
‘Not so great, Dave. A suspect just turned up missing. We’re about to search his house. You have anything for me?’
‘Yeah, but it’s a good thing I love you like family. I had to flaunt my Homeland Security creds big-time on this one. Threaten our nation’s air carriers with the Patriot Act. Imply Wilcox was a suspected terrorist. Anyway, it turns out he made three short round-trips between Raleigh-Durham and Portland over the past year. Trip number one was last December. First class out of Raleigh-Durham on United 3281 December fourteenth, changed planes in D.C. He returned on the seventeenth, also on United.’
Wendy Branca, thought McCabe.
‘Second trip was April nineteenth, return on the twenty-third. Same flights.’
Brian Henry.
‘Third trip was just last week. Left North Carolina on US Air 621 and changed in Newark.’
‘What days?’
‘Left Raleigh-Durham Tuesday the thirteenth and returned Friday morning the sixteenth. How’s that jibe with what you got?’
‘You hit the trifecta, Dave. Three dates. Three victims. They all coincide.’
‘Well, my friend, that means you’ve got serious cause for concern. Because Dr. Wilcox may be back in Maine as we speak.’
Oh, Christ. Lucinda Cassidy.
‘He flew out of Raleigh-Durham Wednesday afternoon on American 1560, landed in Fort Lauderdale.’
‘Lauderdale? I thought you said Maine.’
‘Hold on. I’m getting to that. His
return flight’s Sunday morning. From Portland. No info on how he gets from Lauderdale to Portland. Airline calls it “arunk.” Arrival unknown. Just to be sure we had the right Matthew Wilcox, I called his office at UNC. Assistant said he was out of town. Wouldn’t be back until Monday. I asked her if she knew where he was going. She said no. Not real friendly for a southern gal. So I took the obvious tack and scared the bejesus out of her. Told her she might be aiding and abetting terrorist activity.’
‘Jesus, Dave. You could get your ass in a sling for that.’
‘Nah. I’ll be alright. She didn’t sound like she wanted any trouble. Anyway, she finally told me he’d gone to Boca Raton on personal business and then was heading to Maine for the weekend.’
‘Did she say where in Maine?’
‘Said she didn’t know. I also checked his cell phone. It’s been turned off since he left town.’
‘Let me have the number,’ said McCabe. Hennings gave it to him. ‘The airline have any information on where he’s staying in Maine or possible car rentals?’
‘No. None. I called Hertz and Avis directly. Nothing there either. I haven’t had time to check the others. Also haven’t checked the chain hotels. Of course, there’s a million independents up there in Maine. He could be at any one of them.’
‘Or none, and he could be using an assumed name.’ The driver pulled up around the corner from Spencer’s house on Trinity Street. Tasco and Fraser were already there in one car, Maggie in another. Half a dozen uniformed officers completed the search team.
‘Good hunting.’
‘Thanks, Dave.’
‘My pleasure. By the way, we’re now officially even on favors. You may even owe me a couple.’
‘Absolutely. Love to Rosemary.’
The detectives huddled in the street discussing strategy. Because Lucinda Cassidy might be a hostage, McCabe told the others he wanted to enter quietly and not force a confrontation. They deployed the uniformed officers to the sides and rear of the property to cut off avenues of escape. Tasco and Fraser covered the driveway. Maggie and McCabe headed for the house.
Twenty-four Trinity Street had an empty, forlorn look about it. Windows shut. Shades drawn. On the front step, Maggie stood to one side of the door, her back against the house, McCabe to the other. He rang the bell. They waited. Rang it again. Quietly, McCabe tried the handle. Locked. They could either break in or pick the lock. Again McCabe preferred the quiet option. Less likely to panic anyone hiding inside. The front lock was an Ilco tubular model. Pickable but not easy. Plus you needed special tools they didn’t have.
They slipped around to the kitchen door and looked in through the glass. Empty. A coffee mug on the round oak table, nothing else out of place. He tried the knob. Locked, an older-style Schlage pin-and-tumbler dead bolt. He took out the small leather wallet he’d brought from Maggie’s car and withdrew a slender tension wrench and one of three stainless steel picks, each shaped like a delicate dental tool, a small hook on the end. He knelt, putting the lock at eye level. Maggie drew her weapon and waited.
McCabe inserted the wrench in the keyhole and turned it a quarter turn to the right. Then he slid the pick in, probed, found a pin, and eased it onto the narrow ledge of the cylinder. One by one, he lifted the remaining pins. When all five were clear of the shear line, he turned the wrench. The lock slid open.
Inside, weapons drawn, the two detectives looked and listened to the silence. A slow drip from the kitchen faucet. The ticking of a clock. A motor turning on in the fridge. The coffee mug on the table was filled about halfway with clear liquid, traces of lipstick marking the rim. McCabe sniffed. The scent of gin. A familiar ploy of drunks the world over. Every morning, for years, Tom McCabe senior sipped his Bushmill’s from a bone china teacup. ‘Pa’s tea,’ he called it. Mom never spoke of it. Never let the kids say anything either. Not to the old man. Not to anyone. She grew angry when Tom junior, Tommy the Narc, brought it up the day they put the old man in the ground. Sixty-one years old. A liver ailment. Mom only forgave Tommy his indiscretion after he himself was dead.
Four interior doors led from the kitchen. The first opened on an empty butler’s pantry. The second, a set of back stairs leading up to the second floor. Behind the third, more stairs, this time down to what looked like an unfinished cellar. The last door led into a broad central hall. They decided Maggie would stay in the kitchen to block anyone exiting from either the back stairs or the cellar. McCabe would check the other rooms.
To the right of the hall he found a formal dining room, a gleaming mahogany table and eight Duncan Phyfe chairs in the middle. He had a vivid memory of Sandy coveting a similar set in an antique store in Connecticut. Frustrated and angry they couldn’t afford even one of the chairs on a cop’s salary, she sulked all the way back to New York. Probably had the whole set now.
Beyond the dining room McCabe found the small den he’d seen from outside on his first visit. It, too, lay silent and empty, the New York Times crossword still in the same place, still half finished. He crossed the hall. A pair of massive pocket doors, each weighing several hundred pounds, blocked entry to what he assumed was the living room. He gave one a gentle push. The beautifully balanced door rolled silently and smoothly into its pocket on the far side, revealing another empty room.
An open bottle of Tanqueray stood on a silver tray on a walnut chest. The source, he supposed, of Hattie Spencer’s morning nip. On the opposite wall, a pair of tall windows looked out on the front garden. He remembered Hattie’s slender form outlined in the far window, seeing him off the property, just days before.
Something soft rubbed against his leg. A small black-and-white cat looked up and purred, then continued past, squeezing itself under the protective legs of an upholstered chair. It peered out at McCabe. McCabe peered back. The animal decided to ignore the man and began licking its once white feet, now stained a dark red.
The trail of cat’s prints led out into the hall and up the broad stairs that arched gracefully to the landing on the second floor. McCabe probably wouldn’t have noticed them against the dark wood had he not been looking for them. He touched a finger to one at the top of the stairs. Still damp. The paw prints led to a room at the end of the hall, its door open just enough for a small cat to have slipped through. McCabe walked to the end of the corridor, raised one foot, and gently pushed. Silence. He entered and scanned the room, pointing the .45 first left, then right. Sheets lay rumpled on a queen-sized four-poster bed, dark red bloodstains providing a vivid counterpoint to the white lace canopy above. Beyond the bed, McCabe saw a thickening pool still spreading slowly across the not quite level floor. He swallowed hard and walked around the end of the bed to the other side.
Philip Spencer’s naked body lay on its back, his smug arrogance gone, his once handsome face contorted in agony. An overturned chair indicated a final struggle. He’d been stabbed half a dozen times. Where Spencer’s legs met, there was now only an open wound. On the wall above the bed, written in Spencer’s blood, a line from the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
McCabe counted the ways and counted again. Each time, the only answer that made any sense was the one that added up to Lucas Kane.
47
Friday. 12:30 P.M.
McCabe’s eyes darted back and forth between Spencer’s body and the bloody writing on the wall. In his mind’s eye, he saw Lucas Kane standing triumphant atop Denali. Lucas Kane. Spencer’s lover. Spencer’s betrayer. Spencer’s killer. How do I love thee, Kane had asked. The only truthful answer was the one Browning had written. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. Assuming, of course, Kane’s soul was, as Melody Bollinger described, vicious and voracious, sex defining nearly everything Lucas Kane did. McCabe was sure Bollinger was right about these things. He was now also certain she was right about Kane being alive – and deep down inside himself, in a place of which he was only dimly aware, he knew that was some
thing he was going to have to change.
He heard steps in the corridor. Maggie’s long figure appeared in the door. She saw the bloody sheets on the bed. He held up a hand to stop her. Ignoring it, she crossed the room and looked down. She closed her eyes, opened them, looked around, walked to the master bathroom, bent over Harriet Spencer’s fancy French bidet, and threw up.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said.
‘Not a problem.’
He took out his cell and hit Tasco’s number. Just as it rang, they heard the steel basement hatch, outside the back door, clang shut. McCabe moved to the bathroom window. A tall figure, dressed in black and wearing cowboy boots, walked quickly but calmly to the side door of the garage. Then the man turned, looked up, and, for an instant, smiled at McCabe in the window. Before McCabe could get a shot off, Lucas Kane disappeared.
‘Mike, Mike, answer me. Dammit.’ Tasco’s voice, shouting from the cell.
‘The garage, Tom. He’s in the garage. Get him.’
‘Spencer?’
‘No, Spencer’s dead. The murderer.’
From his right, McCabe saw Tasco and Fraser sprinting up the driveway, weapons drawn.
‘Careful, Tommy,’ he shouted into the cell. Tasco wasn’t listening.
An engine roared to life. Garage doors slid open. Tires squealed. Philip Spencer’s black Porsche Boxster hurtled down the driveway, spraying gravel. Tasco leapt out of the way. Eddie Fraser stood his ground and fired twice. The car sideswiped Fraser, tossing him into the air. He landed hard on the lawn. The small Porsche just made it past Tasco’s blocking vehicle. It turned left and screamed away. Tasco squeezed off two rounds. Both missed. He ran to the radio in his Crown Vic. ‘This is seven-two-two. Detective down. I need an ambulance at 24 Trinity Street. Hit-and-run suspect vehicle heading west toward Vaughan. Black Porsche Boxster. Maine registration Two-Eight-Zero-One-Victor-Romeo. Repeat Two-Eight-Zero-One-Victor-Romeo. One male subject in vehicle. Consider armed and very dangerous. Over.’
